


Layman Scripts

by Pseudinymous



Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: A fic that started small and rapidly grew well out of proportion, An adventure where Jazz has reluctantly become an extremely effective ghost hunter, And where the Ghostwriter discovers friendship in life-threatening situations, Character Study, Heaps and heaps of Danny Phantom lore, Kind of scary mystery adventure, Plus someone gets a book smashed into their face!, Psychology, VERY Longfic, longfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-11-16
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-08-24 11:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16639457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pseudinymous/pseuds/Pseudinymous
Summary: Danny Fenton is in a coma, and Jazz thinks it's her own fault. She was supposed to guard the portal. Instead, she allowed through one of the most dangerous ghosts imaginable on the heartfelt feeling it was being sincere.... So what is she doing, considering letting another ghost through? Her compassion might well give her the first lead she's seen in over two years, but it's also going to cause some problems.The Ghostwriter just wanted to visit. He, too, gets a lot more than he bargained for.





	1. The Beginning of the Unorthodox

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to The Rewrite.
> 
> The original version of this fic was posted on Fanfiction.net and continues to update there to this day. This here on AO3, however, is the painstakingly updated, cleaned up, tightened, reworked version.
> 
> Things you can expect this fic to do: Get tangled in lore, utilise fluff, place characters in life-or-death situations, deal with extremely difficult conversations, include snarky fights between siblings, and prod the psychology of loneliness and loss. There's also some weird comedy, because everything's better with that.
> 
> A note: There is violence and some strictly non-sexual mature themes, however probably not enough to warrant an M rating. Regardless, some people under the age of 15 may feel uncomfortable. 
> 
> Chapters will be released roughly every two weeks until Chapter 28.
> 
> Finally, a special thanks to thehobblefootalchemist, who supported and supported and supported this story, so much so that without her it may never have gotten past Chapter 13. Even if it had, it would never have managed the storyline it has today. I am endlessly indebted. If you ever find yourself in need of more Ghostwriter and Jazz interaction, please visit her AO3. You won't regret it.
> 
> -Sudo

He knew it wasn't a good idea.

There were traps, said the whisperings. Terrible things might happen to those unable to defend themselves, and those who could? Even they came back nursing their wounds, howling at their failures. Mind you, many of those ghosts were also seeking death and destruction. The Ghostwriter just wanted to visit.

But he’d left this journey far too late. Those wanting to visit the Earth should have done so two years prior, when Amity Park wasn’t laden with painful traps and terrible consequences, and when the ghost hunters were mere bumbling fools. But no! He just had to have the urge now, when it was so treacherous, and when the stakes were so incredibly high.

… Being stuck in the Ghost Zone could do that to you, though. The time he had spent there had become maddeningly long, and even though he surrounded himself with a seemingly endless number of books, it just couldn’t ever be enough. The need to see things for real, to be your own story and not just some passive observer, it seeped into your mind, crept through your veins, and took its hands around your soul — all while the world outside moved on without you, leaving you behind as you entertained yourself into a little bubble of oblivion.

It was this that the Ghostwriter knew better than anyone else he could think of. At times he would liken it to a joyful life, but such a way of living had taken a serious mental toll: the longer his existence stretched on, even as his endless drive to write continued, the more he realised it wasn’t truly living.

And now the part of him that could never be alive was the same part urging him to take that awkward, hesitant first step out into the Old New World. It may not have been dangerous to what he once was, but to what he was today, the situation couldn’t be any more different.

The portal was before him. He could make this venture whenever he wanted. He could also turn around and go straight back home. Both options were viable, and both had reasoning. Of course, some parts of that reasoning were inherently more rational than others. It caused anxiety to flutter within his chest, but he crushed it down until there was just enough courage leftover to do the unthinkable:

Expecting anything, eyes wide open, he passed through to the other side.

The ghost was immediately confronted by a sea of ectoplasmic ooze. It wasn’t the same stuff that illuminated the Ghost Zone, however; with its sickening raw energy, this ectoplasm was different, refined, experimented upon. Its presence wasn’t surprising when you remembered that this was Maddie and Jack Fenton’s basement laboratory, but nevertheless it made the Ghostwriter’s strange green equivalent of blood freeze within his implicit veins.

Nothing else happened.

In the Ghostwriter’s mind, it took several moments to register that something terrible had not yet befallen him. The ghost alarms had not gone off. In fact, it seemed as though they’d never been turned on in the first place. Without the blinding lights or the blaring sirens to alert anyone to his presence, Writer decided to take his time, even if invisibly, to absorb this place. Possibly such a dank and strange environment could be a source of inspiration too, in its own way? The whole affair was quite unlike anything he’d ever seen before in person, with every part worthy of observation. In the absence of any apparent threat, the Ghostwriter peered into draws, opened up cabinets, and inspected a strange piece of equipment he felt wise to never ever touch. He looked up and down and sideways and then he turned around and—

An ecto-gun barrel. Trained at his forehead and straight between his eyes, forcing him to stare right down into its glowing metallic abyss. Whoever was behind it shoved the end into the Ghostwriter’s nose, knocking his glasses into a position quite askew.

“God,” he whispered. Hideous simulations of mind-bending, body-twisting, glorious blossoming pain shot through the writer’s mind. This wasn't going to be fun.

“You seem awfully scared for a ghost,” accused the person behind that awful contraption. Flowing red hair could be seen either side of the gun, and just above it a woman’s face was distorting in anger. “Didn’t think I could see you while you were invisible, huh? Someone hasn’t kept up with the times.”

“… How?” the Ghostwriter rasped, mind whirling into Defence Mode. It was unfortunate that this consisted almost entirely of ‘ _which way can I escape_ ’, and was notably devoid of any rational ideas about how to avoid getting his face blown off. “Wait, I’m only here to look around!” he began to protest. “Can’t we— how about we talk about this for a moment? _Without_ the gun?”

The woman, who the writer suddenly recognised as a much older-looking Jasmine Fenton, did not lower her weapon. “The gun stays,” she declared, neatly avoiding the topic of how she could see into the invisible plane. “And you’re going straight back into the Ghost Zone, right where you belong.”

No. This wasn’t going right. It was his only chance of seeing the Real World for the time being, and he wasn’t going to let that just slip through his fingers! “I promise you, my only intention here is to look around,” he begged. “It’s been decades. Please don’t begrudge me this.”

“You’re a ghost,” she said firmly, robotically. “I can’t let you through.”

But then was that… was that a flash of uncertainty? It flittered across the Fenton girl’s face as a minor crack in her hardened exterior, betrayed by a flinch so fleeting that all but the most skilled would have missed it. For the Ghostwriter, fear clearly replaced that skill, and he pounced on the opportunity like a cat on a cornered mouse. “Whatever horrible things you’ve seen — and I’m sure you’ve seen plenty — I’m not that type of person. Not all of us are dangerous, I swear it.”

Jazz remained silent. The gun was still trained on him. He was so tense that he could almost feel his own non-existent sweat.

“Please, I’m like you,” he said, giving one final push. “I remember being human, all of it! Even if I am a ghost.”

It was working. _Somehow_ , he’d managed to get through to her just a little bit. Not completely of course, because even as she took her finger away from the trigger, and even as that look of pure hatred devolved into a kind of honest insecurity, the barrel was still set squarely on his face. But it was still progress.

“I let a ghost through once,” Jazz began. “She told me she just wanted to see the sun set.”

This time the Ghostwriter remained very, very silent. He didn’t like where this was going.

“When I stopped pointing this gun at her, she broke both of my arms, put my brother in a coma, and disappeared.”

He could feel the gears in his mind jamming in position. Through his poem and the ramblings of the ghosts around him, he felt like he knew about this family fairly well. Jasmine Fenton had only one brother — the infamous and enigmatic Danny Phantom — and when the Writer thought about it, he hadn’t seen or heard of the boy in a very long time.

“… The Phantom boy is in a coma?” he hazarded, carefully avoiding the topic of what had put him there. “I never knew. I always just assumed I’d shut myself in too long to hear about him.”

There was a slight pause before he got a response, as if Jazz was trying to catch up with the information she’d just been given. “You shut yourself in?”

“I-I don’t get out very much.” He tried to halter a stammer and failed. “I just stay in and read. Look, I only came out today because I’ve been stuck in that place for so long that I thought I was starting to go mad.”

He expected her to hook into this, question him on the insanity he’d just accidentally admitted to, but she did not. “… I don’t want to be stuck here, either,” she told him quietly, but it didn’t take long for the scepticism to leak back through. “I’ve never heard of a ghost that just reads all day.”

“Well, we don’t exactly make a lot of noise.”

“Touché. What else do you do?”

It was true that this conversation had taken a rather abrupt turn, but considering the Ghostwriter was still waiting to have a shockingly painful ectoplasmic charge shot straight through his skull, keeping up with the intricacies of ' _socialising_ ' was rather more taxing than normal. “I write?” he tried. His voice was starting to go high, now.

“And?”

“ _Exist_?” he added, rather more emphatically.

Jazz’s gaze was cold. She wasn’t going to hesitate in using that gun if he flinched. “Anything else you’d like me to know?”

“Yes!” he said, through rows of nervously gritted, pointed teeth. “I sincerely dislike extreme pain!”

Jazz’s arms marginally relaxed. There was even a tiny one-sided smile on her face as she lowered the weapon — now she pointed it straight at his core instead of straight at his face. “Okay. I’ll admit that’s pretty fair.”

Had the Ghostwriter been breathing, he would have been taking some of the shakiest breaths in his life. “I’m not quite at the end of this yet, am I?”

“Well, I’m still not sure I believe you only read and write all the time either, so no.”

“Is it really that implausible?”

Jazz thumbed the trigger, presumably to make his insides squirm. “Maybe, but as I said before, I’ve never heard of a ghost that just reads all day. Writing’s in much the same territory.”

He tried not to think about how extremely worthless potential exits were when you were stuck at gunpoint. “Writers aren’t exempt from death.”

“But, are they exempt from becoming ghosts?” she hypothesised, stepping dangerously into a puddle far deeper than her pool of knowledge. “What are your thoughts on that?”

He gritted his teeth again. “If that’s your line of reasoning, then I think you don’t understand.”

“How about violence, then?” Jazz continued. “If you want to run down that path, why don’t we take a look at some of the psychological statistics for writers? Mental illness, substance abuse, many accounts of using writing as a type of catharsis. Perhaps you could teach me how traits like that translate when someone dies and finds themselves in control of enough power to destroy a city block.”

The Ghostwriter strongly considered just getting straight back into the portal then and there. It was tempting — but so was the suggestion of the sun shining down to the Earth on a warm afternoon, casting everything from the road in front to the hills on the horizon in a mesmerising yellow-gold light. He held onto that thought when he figured out how to open his mouth again.

“... Don’t categorise me like that. Your brother isn’t a barbarian and neither am I — that is, unless you believe all ghosts inherently want to kill you, himself included.”

A shocked pause before she found her tongue. “Of course not, Danny was a good person and he didn’t deserve what happened to him! He protected all of us!”

Writer left the resulting silence right where it was. The air grew thick until the vacuum of sound became unbearable, in essence stealing the next words right out of Jazz’s mouth.

“Why should I trust you over any other ghost I’ve caught?” she questioned, right on cue.

This was leeway. Not particularly good leeway — it challenged one to prove the impossible — but Writer was rather sure the woman in front of him was quite aware of that. Feeling a bit defeated, he drooped mid-air. “Unless you spontaneously develop the ability to read minds, there’s nothing I can do to guarantee my intentions.”

More silence. Jazz stirred uncomfortably.

“What if… we made an agreement?”

The proposal caught him with about the same amount surprise one might experience if a bag full of rattlesnakes was thrown at their face. “An agreement?”

The girl nodded. “You said you write books, right? Go back in there and get one so I know you’re at least probably not lying about your daily occupation. After that, you’re going to let me tag you with a satellite tracker. I’ll let you through, but if I hear of you even stepping a _toe_ out of line, let it be known I will hunt you down and put you through more hell than you could ever imagine.”

At first, the Ghostwriter looked into Jazz’s eyes in such a way that suggested he couldn’t quite believe her — as laden with threat as it was, the outcome seemed too good to be true. ... And it probably was, considering that the ecto-gun was still primed and ready to cause some serious bodily harm. Surely there’d be some sort of hidden clause to this shaky agreement?

But the world outside… it was then that he realised after all these years he’d give up a lot just to see it, perhaps only and particularly today.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Go,” Jazz commanded, keeping her ecto-gun trained on him all the way back through the portal, primed until the ghost had well and truly vanished. The Ghostwriter, still hardly able to believe what was happening, sped towards his home quicker than he could ever remember.

... Of course, Jazz could hardly believe what was happening, either.

What on earth was she doing, giving some ghost a pass with just a satellite tag? Her parents would be entirely against it. Even she was against it! It was true that she didn’t believe all ghosts were inherently evil, but at the same time almost every one of them had enough power to cause serious damage to the town! Why was this ghost who looked like a wireframe wrapped up in a coat and glasses any different? The only way complete safety could be guaranteed was if the Ghost Zone was quarantined from the Real World...

If she thought about it, though, there was something about him that seemed a lot more… docile than most of the other ghosts she’d met. There was also a sincerity to his words that made him seem infinitely more trustworthy than even the ghost who had lured and attacked her. Did that mean a sense of trustworthiness was a dangerous trait she would need to look out for?

Jazz had never felt so confused about anything in her life. Had she just done something incredibly dangerous? Incredibly stupid?

She stared down uselessly at the ecto-gun she was supposed to be protecting the city with. With the Fenton Portal’s genetic lock and safe power-down near permanently damaged, guarding the lab in shifts was all she and her parents could manage. This duty, of course, was well supported by those living in the ghost-infested hell of Amity Park.

The irony of this entire situation was not lost on her, however. The ghost attacks had died down a lot since Danny had been left lifeless in a coma - it was as if many had simply been trying to get back at him, and weren’t interested if he wasn’t conscious for the beating.

“This is such a mess,” Jazz growled, more at herself than anyone else. “I should have just told that ghost never to come back.”

She placed the ecto-gun gently on the table. Her thoughts threw themselves back to Danny, who lay unmoving on a bed in Amity Park General Hospital — none of the doctors could determine why he wouldn't wake up. A few kept suggesting a knock to the head, but others would dismiss this when not a shred of evidence was found for the trauma. Fenton gadgets had even stopped “malfunctioning” around him too — it was as if he’d taken an accidental trip through the Fenton Ghost Catcher, with his consciousness spirited away alongside his ghost half by that awful, filthy _liar_ of a ghost. How she’d ever done it, Jazz would never know.

Even after all of this, Danny’s secret still lay with herself, Sam, and Tucker, who mutually agreed never to tell the Fenton parents. In any case it didn’t matter because they didn’t have any proof: Danny’s ghost half was missing, and without it there wasn’t anything they could show Maddie and Jack to prove his identity. Circumstantial evidence just wasn’t going to cut it when a mythical creature was the matter of debate.

… It was times like this she really needed her little brother back. Danny understood more about ghosts than her parents ever would.

But then suddenly, it dawned on her.

Ghosts would always know a whole lot more about how their world and their physics worked — they existed with those things every single day! If a nonviolent ghost that spent most of his time reading quietly could exist, then why not a philosopher ghost? A mathematician? Physicists, scientists, thinkers! They all had to die at some point. Hell, if you really wanted to cross the line, even accomplished ghost hunters were not exempt.

That writer ghost, she could use him! Even if he didn’t know how to revive Danny or what had happened, even if he was a self-declared shut-in, thinkers tended to know other thinkers, just like that famous (or perhaps infamous) friendship between Nikola Tesla and Mark Twain. Perhaps it was a lead?

… A dangerous lead.

Jazz picked up her ecto-gun again and rolled it around gently in her hands, before flicking the safety on and thumbing the trigger as she thought. Just how far was she willing to go with this? For that matter, how much could she actually trust this ghost — or any ghost? How quickly could that trust be destroyed?

Jazz screwed up her eyes, trying to convince herself of something she desperately wanted to be true: “The tracking device will be sufficient.”

“Sufficient for what?”

She snapped back out of her own thought-filled stupor. The ghost had returned clutching — apparently for dear life — a blue leather-bound untitled book within his cold, grey fingers. In spite of this he offered her an amiable expression — immediately much more friendly, it would seem, when he wasn’t being threatened at gunpoint. Jazz pointed the ecto-gun back at him half-heartedly, though the barrel was aimed a bit too far to the side. He noticed.

 _Oh, these are dangerous waters you’re wading into_ , Jazz’s mind warned. She chose to ignore that warning.

“Sufficient to… keep you in line. In case you try anything funny,” she told him, awkwardly.

The ghost was a bit more relaxed, now. He waited quietly for further explanation and even drummed his fingers on the spine of his book, but when it became clear nothing was coming, he sighed. “It’s a false journal,” he explained. “Just an experiment.”

Jazz took it from him but didn’t open it, instead putting it down on one of the adjacent lab tables; it glowed just as much as its rightful owner. The ghost stared forlornly at the strange book even afterwards, and something within Jazz began to crack.

“… I’m sorry for putting you through this,” she said, after a moment. “So many ghosts attack us that it’s impossible to tell between good and bad anymore. It’s horrible! My parents think you’re all here to destroy everything but I know that’s not true. I’ve seen ghosts display conscience and morals and all sorts of things that mum and dad refuse to acknowledge — it’s not fair! But I don’t know what’s what at all, I’ve probably turned around and chased out so many ghosts that just wanted to… I don’t know, wander around…”

The Ghostwriter was fleetingly taken aback, but the reaction melted when he realised he now had a far greater understanding of why this girl was going to let him pass at all. Jasmine Fenton was doomed to a guilty conscience regardless of her choices, either by failing to properly defend the city, or by refusing entry to those like him, who wanted nothing more than peace and might even actively defend it. He would have replied, but she looked like she had something further to say, so he locked eyes with her and waited.

“… I need to ask something else of you,” she said, appearing a little sick. “I’ll let you through if you help me get my brother back!”

Her resolve struck him deeply — a simple love for her brother, and an insatiable yearning just to see him conscious again. That alone might transcend almost any negotiation, and right in line, the Writer clearly understood that it might be the best way to gain her trust or maybe even more.

… Maybe it could even mean he’d be allowed entry into the human world whenever he liked, rather than just this once. Sometimes stories began with requests like these, he mused…

On the other hand, it wasn’t the easiest of requests.

“… I suppose I’ll help if I can,” he said, treading carefully. “Though for the sake of transparency, I should make it clear I have no idea how to raise someone out of a coma. If my keyboard was working properly then perhaps, but that’s not the case right now.”

Jazz’s eyes narrowed. “Your keyboard?”

The Ghostwriter stopped himself in his tracks, thinking seriously about what he was going to say. “Mm, it’s a bit of a special… tool, I suppose.”

“And what does it do?”

Great. Perfect. He knew he shouldn’t have trusted his tongue. “Can we talk about this another time?”

“Oh, but I’d like to talk about it now.” Jazz’s voice was unforgiving. Writer sagged midair and looked away.

“You must understand, I don’t use it in a dangerous fashion.”

Jazz’s expression harshened.

“Just, I use it to fix things, make life a bit more interesting—” he emboldened his sentence with some rather vague handwaving, which neither made sense nor clarified the situation “—Maybe sometimes to teach certain individuals a lesson?”

“But what does it _do_?” The girl insisted. The Ghostwriter gave up.

“It… combines with my power to rewrite aspects of reality,” he sighed. “I know how incredibly dangerous that must sound.”

Her expression was unreadable again — at least to the writer, who had interacted with precious few even in his living days. Certainly she froze where she sat, but that wasn't giving him any ideas about how to handle people in this situation. At first a few possibilities popped into mind, but after some light analysis none of them seemed even remotely appropriate. If only he was writing this situation into a story, he’d have known exactly what to do! But unforgivingly, this was real life, and he was about as tactful in real life situations as a brick was at lecturing astrophysics.

So instead, he did what the socially inept everywhere worshipped as salvation: he changed the subject.

“You said you wanted to put some sort of tracking device on me?”

“… Oh right! I did,” said Jazz, standing up with a sudden jolt. The gun had dropped down to her side, now, as if at some point she’d forgotten she was even holding it. “Ah, it might hurt. It wasn’t designed to be… comfortable.”

The Ghostwriter gave her an apprehensive nod. After Walker’s hellhole of a prison, he could manage pain. The prison visit, however, was something he preferred to keep out of the discussion.

The girl circled around him and came to one of the central tables in the room, where all of the much less lethal-looking weapons lived. On the outside this tagging device was apparently a modified dart gun; obviously it could be loaded with some sort of technological tracking dart, although the Writer would freely admit he hadn’t seen much technology in his life. Hesitantly, Jazz picked it up. “You ready for this?”

He nodded again. “… It's fine, but how about an area without so many nerves?”

“An arm will do,” Jazz declared. She brandished the gun carefully but it still made him feel sick. “Clench your teeth! … And please try not to scream.”


	2. Thou Shalt Not

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One week late, however I am pleased to report that I used said week to take and most likely pass the JLPT N5 exam! For folks out of the circle, that's the first level of basic Japanese proficiency. I worked very hard to do this and learned the language mostly without teachers, so I suppose I'm kinda proud of myself. :)
> 
> Anyhow, let's continue!

Exact description of the experience failed him. At best he could list its symptoms — eyes streaming, face burning, arm feeling as though it would be better off amputated — you could at least say that it was not enjoyable. Not even Walker’s prison guards had managed to inflict anything that came close.

Somewhere in the background there was an endless stream of apologies, all pouring into one of his ears and then flowing out the other, a waterfall of meaningless words. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, the dart gun’s so old, maybe one of the components is faulty, maybe Mum and Dad changed it without telling me, oh god—”

“ _S’fine_ ,” the Ghostwriter croaked, while trying to think of as many ghostly methods of suicide as possible. It’d been the smallest dart, too! Really it should have been a piece of cake, a simple injection, but instead it was far more like taking an arm full of shrapnel. The pain didn’t end after the dart had successfully embedded its tracker into his wrist either, oh no! His wrist throbbed, and viciously, having apparently decided it should continue to do so for the next 20 minutes. He barely knew what hit him.

Jazz put the dart gun down with significant trepidation, eyeing it as though the safety might snap off and take out one of the basement walls. Her next hopefully-mishap-free mission was to locate a very particular drawer, then fish out the tracking device’s receiver from the extra dimension it seemed to contain. She was still digging when the Ghostwriter, who had busied himself with painfully ripping pieces of broken dart out of his arm, decided to peer over into the disaster that faced them both.

“You know, the Ghost Zone is bottomless but I think that might just go down further.”

“Dad’s organisation skills do leave a bit to be desired,” she admitted, before finding the correct object (Was it correct? All of this electronic junk looked the same…) and booting the device up. “Oh, it’s asking for a name. What do I call you?”

“ _Amity Park General Hospital Patient No. 294_ if you want to put another tracking device on me.”

Jazz hid her embarrassment about as tactfully as a cat that had just slipped off a fence. That was as good as it got.

“It’s Ghostwriter,” he added, clearing his throat to break the humiliation. “That’s what the other ghosts call me.”

“I meant your real name. You must’ve had one, once.”

 _Great_ , he thought. _She’s going to dig._

“Technically yes, just about everyone has a real name stashed away somewhere, but heavens girl I haven’t gone by it since I was twelve.”

“So what’d your parents call you when you were older?”

“Writer. That’s it.”

Jazz’s brow furrowed. “It’s not really a name. Isn’t it like, an adjective?”

“It’s a proper noun if you wish hard enough,” Writer finished, indignantly. “Can’t you be happy with that?”

To Jazz it was a strange thing, not so much a stretch as it was a curiosity — she’d never met someone reluctant to go by anything except a false moniker, and her thirst to amass more psychological knowledge than any human alive drove her on. “Well, if that’s what you want, then I guess that’s fine… but what’s wrong with your real name?”

A mental image of Randy flashed through his head. “Let’s not even begin with what was wrong with it.”

Jazz tapped two of her fingers on her face, apparently lost in thought. Had the Ghostwriter known about her admittedly zealous enthusiasm towards various forms of psychoanalysis, he’d have realised she was pondering whether it was better to psychoanalyse him now or just wait until later, when she had more of his trust. Alas he was ignorant and so merely stared at her blankly, waiting for her to take the lead. She didn’t, and some sort of weird primal instinct gave him an overwhelming urge to avoid all eye contact.

For a moment they simply stood, diverting each of their gazes, until finally Jazz found herself uncomfortable enough to make some kind of next move. “… Look,” she began, taking the seat in the centre of the room. “If you’re going to be helping me investigate this, it might be better if you were a little more… human.”

His expression was somewhere between surprised and flabbergasted, and not at all flattering. “How exactly do you expect me to achieve that?” he scoffed. “I’m not your brother, it’s not as if I can just magically stop being dead, I’m—”

“—stuck like that, I know,” Jazz finished. Was completing other people’s sentences a habit of hers? Perhaps that was going to become grating. “I’m talking about a device though, one we used to use with Danny.”

“Oh?” he asked, leaning forward in the air, intrigued. “Will this be as painful as the last one?”

“No! … No. It’s just a wristband. Danny’s friend Tucker and I made it using some of the technology from this lab.”

“And what does it do?”

“Well, we just made it to hide him from ghost detectors mainly, but there was this kind of weird side-effect where he stopped glowing.”

“… Really?”

Jazz gave her first confident nod of the evening. Saying something, considering the only being they’d ever tested it on was a half-human half-ghost hybrid. “Yeah, his ghost form looked kind of… normal afterwards. You might as well take it, it’s not as if he needs it right now…”

The Ghostwriter thought about this as he straightened his glasses — still crooked, he realised, from having had an ecto-gun shoved into them not 20 minutes ago. Some rather glaring problems immediately presented themselves: firstly, even without the glow, his skin was a completely unnatural shade of grey that usually presented on the brink of death. Secondly, his ears were pointed and so were his teeth, which was going to be a _problem_ if someone noticed.

“… I assume your goal here is to allow me to visibly walk outside without attracting attention. May I humbly point out that there are corpses with better complexions than mine?”

Jazz’s frowned. The more she squinted at him, the more she realised that seeing ghosts every day had dulled her criteria for what passed as living. “Um,” she said, grasping at straws, “Perhaps you could say you’ve got argyria?”

“And what in God’s name is that?”

“… A permanent blueish-grey complexion due to excessive exposure to colloidal silver.”

The Writer blinked once as the words soaked into his mind, then blinked again as they drained straight back out the other side. “… Why, praytell, did I have an excessive exposure to colloidal silver?”

Jazz shrugged. “Quack medicine, probably.

“You couldn’t pay me to buy that, neither the medicine nor the cover-up, but I—” he paused, listening. “Did you hear that?”

Something was stirring upstairs. Jazz’s face slipped away from honest thought to creeping horror: “She’s home early!” she sputtered, leaping out of her chair and diving through her handbag. Her face snapped up at him while still digging out its contents. “Quick, fix up your hair!”

There was precious little time to waste. Someone’s footsteps were rapidly approaching the basement, and as he frantically combed his hair over the tips of his own pointed ears, he could see Jazz was making little progress in finding the device. Perhaps, he thought, it would be better to just disappear and take his chances outside.

“Hi, sweetie!” Maddie Fenton’s voice echoed in an ominously cheerful fashion down the stairs, though she didn’t seem to be descending them quite yet. “Did you turn anything back today?”

“Just the Box Ghost again!” Jazz called back, right as she claimed her object of interest. It was then hurled at her inadvisable companion so suddenly and with so little warning that it smacked him in the left cheek before falling sadly into his fingers. After a few seconds of getting over the indignity of having a bracelet thrown point blank at his face, the Ghostwriter finally managed to put it on and flick the switch.

… His first impression wasn’t the best.

It started with a buzz. And then he felt it — the untold amounts of ectoplasmic power under his control all crushed up and squashed and compressed, injected several layers deep into the core of his being. The Ghostwriter’s glow did not fade all at once but steadily, while his power seeped away from underneath his skin. He could only liken it to feeling imprisoned within his own body, but for now at least it would make this escapade a little safer.

But, as Jazz quickly realised, not entirely safe. “ _Writer_!” she growled. “ _Use your feet_!”

He’d been floating. Oh, god, how on earth had he forgotten he was floating? The ghost’s feet hit the ground so fast that he nearly overbalanced, but he corrected himself just in time to somehow look reasonably well put together. The ghost hunter had miraculously missed this entire spectacle, and was staring at him curiously from the bottom of the staircase.

“… Jazz, who is this? What’s he doing in our lab?” she asked. “… Is he sick?”

Well, the device was good enough, anyway.

“He’s a friend! Not sick!” said Jazz. The words poured from her mouth faster than she knew she could speak. “His name is…” _thinking, thinking_ … “John!”

The ghost shot her a stare which suggested that, if anything on this god-forsaken planet, his name most certainly would not be John. Maddie looked him up and down and back up again, her eyes eventually resting steadily on his. No anger or suspicion was etched into her features, and at the end of it all she could only sound concerned. “He’s lost all the colour in his face, though. John, are you feeling alright?”

“I’m fine,” he replied, stiffly. “It’s a medical condition. Everyone asks.”

“Oh. Will you be okay, then? You’re as pale as—”

“—a ghost, I know. That’s what I keep getting told.” He was going to have to become resigned to this, wasn’t he? At least until they invented strange wristband devices that could make you a little less dead-looking. “Fortunately I’m otherwise fine.”

Maddie tilted her head. “What’s it called?”

“Mum, come on!” Jazz cut in, quickly. “He’s a guest, not a science project! It can be really psychologically damaging to be questioned about a condition like this all the time.”

A moment of blankness passed through Maddie’s face, followed closely by some brief but poignant embarrassment. “—I’m sorry, I really forgot my manners. John, dear, would you like to come upstairs and have some tea?”

The Ghostwriter froze. “Er, I’ll come upstairs, but I’m afraid I’ll have to take a pass on the tea. Not a fan.”

“How about a cup of coffee, then?” Maddie suggested. “Or a glass of lemonade?” Her suggestions weren’t getting much reception. “… Water?”

“No, really, I’m completely fine,” the ghost urged back. “I’ve… not been here long? Drank a fair bit of water back at my house. … Before I left.”

“Really?” she said.

“Mm.”

Maddie frowned, not quite sure how else to deal with her daughter’s Unexpected Guest. “… Well, okay. If you do feel like something a little later, all you have to do is ask.”

“Absolutely.” He tried not to look internally tortured about the situation. “Thank you kindly… was it Maddie?”

“Yes, exactly right!” said the ghost hunter, before beckoning them both upstairs. “Come on, why don’t we all sit down together for a moment? Jazz, turn on the security system on your way up.”

The Ghostwriter barely knew what to do with himself. He’d come to this place with a few very simple objectives: get outside, have a look around for a few days while the keyboard’s getting fixed, and avoid getting shot. In the space of just twenty minutes this had ballooned into 1. being indoctrinated into figuring out how to cure a serious medical condition, 2. masquerading as a normal human being, and 3. pretending to be the good friend of a ghost hunter’s daughter. At no point could you possibly say any of these ideas were safe ones.

… Worse still was the idea, however, that he might be discovered in a ghost hunter’s very own house if Maddie continued offering him food and drink. It was difficult for him to accept snacks or meals of any kind when he was biologically incapable of consuming them, and if it was found out that he couldn’t actually swallow the game was going to be up. He could hear the electric whine of the guns charging up already.

Jazz hit the security switch. The Ghostwriter’s presence was not detected.

In the lounge room Maddie found herself an adequate but not extravagantly comfortable seat in the middle of the lounge. An ominous bag of shopping sat hauntingly on the coffee table, and she pointed to it in that forcefully caring way that mothers tended to. “Do you want some cookies, John? I’ve just been shopping, so I have plenty.”

He understood this wasn’t a question, but the answer was inevitably no.

Jazz took a seat near her mother. The Ghostwriter, however, decided against sitting down and simply stood — perhaps that would indicate he didn’t really have time to stay. Such a minor gesture in the face of everything else was of course entirely unnoticed, however, and Maddie instead set him down with a serious look that had absolutely nothing to do with _you should go home now_. She rested her sharpened eyes on him for a few moments, before shooting her own daughter an even harsher stare.

“I’d be correct in assuming there’s nothing going on between the two of you, yes?”

Jazz’s face managed the colour of an overripe tomato. “You’re joking, aren’t you? John’s in his thirties!”

“… Something like that,” the Ghostwriter wedged in, with more than a few hints of irritation. “We met at the library a couple of weeks ago. I was just curious to see your laboratory.”

Maddie’s heightened sense of over-protectiveness disappeared as quickly as it came. “Oh, well, if that’s all this is, then that’s fine.” It all seemed to be going in a positive direction until a dawning realisation hit the ghost hunter, and her eyes zeroed straight in on her new guest. “So, would you like to learn more about ghosts? You’re certainly in the right place.”

His smirk was deftly stifled. “Mm, actually I already know a bit,” the ghost replied, with meaning. “I was just looking for the tour and then I intended to be off. But perhaps I should like to come back one day and listen?”

No. Big mistake. He should never have shown any interest, he’d well and truly underestimated the obsession Maddie and Jack harboured towards ghosts, look at that mad grin, even! He wasn’t getting away from this one.

“That would be wonderful! You know John—” he cringed at the name “—it’s pretty rare to see someone who’s actually curious rather than, well, just plain terrified. You sound like you’ve had a few contact points with ghosts already?”

“… A few.” He admitted. To his right, Jazz started biting her nails.

“So you fight ghosts, then?” Maddie quizzed. She looked like she wanted to jump out of her seat — God. “Often?”

 _I could still vanish_ , thought the Ghostwriter miserably. “No, that’s far too dangerous. I’ve just been a bystander mostly, like everyone else in this town.”

“Oh.” Maddie deflated again. “My husband Jack and I… we prefer a more action-oriented approach. We have to, what with all the ghosts that come here to attack the city. If their nature wasn’t so violent it might have been different, but there’s not much we can do.”

“… I don’t think they’re all violent,” the Ghostwriter hazarded, diplomatically. Maddie raised her brow, and Jazz did a very good job of burying her face into her hands.

“I’ve never seen a ghost out here who isn’t,” she said, and oh lord, here came the lecture: “The ghosts that escape from our portal? No conscience. No mercy. And so bizarrely obsessed with an object of their own desire that they’ve lost whatever shreds of humanity they may have otherwise held onto. There’s not even any evidence to suggest a ghost is even the same person they were in life anymore. They’re like an entirely different entity, twisted and driven by ugly, hateful emotions.”

The Ghostwriter had to beat down every indignant urge he had within himself to not become a self-fulfilling prophecy. It was said that ghosts felt anger a little more passionately than their human counterparts, and he could certainly feel an overwhelming fury tied to the nature of his very existence starting to creep up from the inside of his core, but he beat it down, much like he had with his fear earlier, and somehow maintained composure.

“I don’t think they’re all conscienceless monsters either,” Jazz added in edgeways, offering an encouraging smile to her extra-dimensional guest. “Maybe ghosts that have a real reason to come through our portal are mostly the ones looking for trouble. I don’t think we’ve studied them well enough to conclusively say none of them have any sort of conscience.”

Maddie didn’t like this, but anger wasn’t on the menu — it was sympathy, and that was almost worse. “Jazz, honey… I know you liked Phantom, but he was a dangerous ghost. Frankly the town’s better off without him, and now that he’s gone the ghost attacks have practically halved.”

“But he was a good person! He always tried his best to protect everyone in this town, he—”

Maddie rolled her eyes. “This again? He wasn’t a person, sweetie. He was a ghost. End of discussion.”

With the tension in the air thickening faster than anyone could control and the writer unable to handle his temper much longer, he decided now might be the best time to excuse himself. “Well, I suppose I should go home and… feed the cat, or something,” he muttered, not without wishing he owned a cat in the first place. “Hope you both have a good night.”

“Wait!” Jazz cut in, before he had a chance to even turn and face the door. “Mum, can you finish my shift? You can finish early too, and I’ll take over until Dad’s on.”

Maddie looked as if about to protest, but for some reason decided not to. “Well, it is only an hour…” she mused. “Don’t the two of you get yourselves up to any trouble now, though.”

“I never get up to trouble,” said Jazz as she stood up, without the usual amount of certainty. “I’ll see you later then, okay?”

“You too. But don’t stay out too late — it’s been dangerous at night recently.”

“I won’t!” called Jazz. She already nearly out the door, and the Ghostwriter was following. “If you need me, call me!”

Maddie nodded, but neither of them saw it.

The Ghostwriter felt an insurgent flood of relief — no, perhaps it was better called a tsunami — as they closed the front door behind them and spilled out onto the street. That relief turned into a cleansing awe when he was finally given chance to catch glimpse of the sky.

... Magenta, yellow, orange, bright and magnificent, flooding through the streets and into the very eyes that allowed him to see it. It lit up the afternoon atmosphere in a way he could scarcely remember, so much so that he couldn’t even quite believe it was happening — the Ghost Zone had no version of the sun, no version of daytime, and not even the faintest trace of night. But the Earth _changed_ , and constantly, in ways that the Ghost Zone couldn’t even fathom. Its people grew older, the plants and trees developed naturally, everything adapted with the slow surety its residents took for granted. But the Ghost Zone, that was different, and it was a very bland place to spend the endless stretches of eternity.

_No wonder some of them have gone insane._

He snapped out of this quiet stupor only when Jazz waved one of her hands in front of his face. “Hello?” she said, insistently. “Anyone home?”

“Of course there—” he began to snap, but stopped himself. And then he snapped again, because there was still some leftover burning indignation from their chat with Maddie. “—Whatever. John? Did you really have to make my name John?”

“Well you didn’t give me a real name!” Jazz rallied. “It was the first decent-sounding thing I could think of!”

“Yes, but _John_? What are you going to tell her next? Is my last name going to be Smith? _Doe_? I’m certainly not in my thirties, either. I’m younger than that.”  
Jazz scoffed. They hadn’t moved at all and were in fact still standing on the Fenton’s doorstep, arguing for reasons neither quite foresaw. “Under what possible definition could you be younger than that?”

“I’m twenty-seven,” claimed the Writer, crossing his arms. “Physically, I’m twenty-seven.”

“Yeah, sure. And what are you actually?”

He didn’t reply until Jazz, amazingly, managed to stare him down. His eyes crept away from her and then gazed guiltily at the neglected pot plants beneath the living room window. “… Sixty.”

They still hadn’t even prepared to start walking. Jazz looked him up and down, and then couldn’t help her own incredulousness. “I can’t believe that’s all.”

“What?”

“No, it’s just… I assumed most ghosts were a lot older.” Jazz remarked, and upon the observation some pedestrians were approaching, she lowered her voice to a whisper. “You must be pretty young by ghost standards.”

... He’d have liked to say he’d never given it much thought, but that would’ve been a lie. “… I suppose so,” he said, whispering back. “But with some of the stupidity you see in the Ghost Zone, you’d think I was one of the oldest there. Did you know the Box Ghost is 508?” Jazz’s mouth hung upon. “Mm. Case in point.”

Once the pedestrians had moved on there didn’t seem to be anyone else around. This street tended to be a bit low on foot traffic, not least of which because of the Emergency Ops Centre (aptly named, considering that one day it was probably going to collapse under its own weight and kill someone). The pair began to walk, slowly, in the direction of the hospital, comfortably out of earshot of others.

“… But how could anyone be obsessed with boxes for five _centuries_? Wouldn’t he get bored?”

The Ghostwriter put his hands up in the air. “Don’t ask me. Honestly, don’t. What I mean is, perhaps I do have the same capacity for obsession, but writing is… it’s a craft. It’s intricate, something you work on throughout life, something you constantly strive to improve. A box is… well at the end of the day it’s just a box, isn’t it?”  
There was a short pause. Jazz’s mouth curved bitterly downwards “You know, it’s times like now that I really hope the Box Ghost hasn’t escaped.”

“What, so I’d have to flick him and watch him careen into yonder sunset?” the Ghostwriter quipped, and upon Jazz’s sceptical look, he crossed his arms and stared backhotly. “I might be weak, but the Box Ghost is truly pathetic.”

It was then that they stopped, if only for a moment, half expecting the Box Ghost to appear and scream out his shallow threats, then attempt to attack them with a barrage of cardboard. That moment never came.

“… Come on, we’re going to the hospital,” said Jazz eventually, beginning to walk again. “It’s only a few blocks down the road.”

And thus they continued.

To be honest, going to Amity Park General Hospital was one of the last things the Ghostwriter wanted to do. As he walked he could feel his mind and body both itching to explore, but when going along with all of this was the only thing between him and being shot in the face, sacrifices had to be made. Curiously he re-examined the sky as he walked, which still washed its entrancing ever-changing light all over them.

… Maybe he could be contented with that, for now.

“You mentioned you read a lot,” said Jazz, suddenly. That had to be an olive branch. “How many books do you have?”

“Hm. Billions, probably.”

After all these years it had become a casual throwaway number to him now, but to his side Jazz was quite a ways through a coronary. “ _Billions_?!” she stammered, trying not to spit. She accidentally spat anyway and quickly covered her mouth. “Where did they all come from?!”

“Well, I live in a library. They just seem to appear there of their own accord,” said the Writer, as if that was a reasonable suggestion. Jazz was now having her second coronary and setting a few new world medical records. He ignored her and continued. “There must be a copy of just about everything. The books just seem to appear when the author says they’re done, publisher be damned.”

“So… do you get scientific journals? Psychology textbooks?”

The Ghostwriter shrugged. “Did someone write them?”

“You’re joking — you have all of them?”

“Somewhere,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. “ _Where_ is the hard part. When a collection gets that big organisation becomes… problematic. The archives go on forever.”

“So you couldn’t find them?” she quizzed, digging quite deliberately into his pride. He scowled.

“No, if I’m looking for something specific, I’ll find it.”

“Immediately?”

The Ghostwriter sighed. “Eventually.”

In the space between their words, Jazz filed away a mental note to ask about fifty different psychology titles she’d been keeping an eye out for but were virtually impossible to find. There’d be other times for that, though. For now, a large white building was looming over the end of the street, and Jazz breathed out slowly in anticipation. “We’re almost there.”

* * *

Jazz and the Ghostwriter neared Danny’s room on the fifth floor of the hospital only after a brief battle with reception, which had involved convincing several bewildered nurses that the writer had not, indeed, come in because he was asphyxiating. He later conceded that such conversations were going to be a regular part of his life.

By the time they reached the door to Danny’s room, Writer started to notice it; the way Jazz was drawing laboured breath, pausing to take a few gulps of sterile, foul-smelling hospital air. Perhaps this was an attempt to get a good handle on her emotions? He questioned it, but she just waved her hand, muttered something inaudible, and shook her head.

“… Are you sure you want to go in?” he asked, eventually. “I can look at him myself, though I’m not exactly sure what it is you want me to do.”

“I… no, we’ll both go,” Jazz decided, starting to calm down. “… You don’t need to do anything, I just want to see what you think.”

Writer regarded her sceptically but did not complain. If there wasn’t anything binding him to fixing this kid, then it was kind of like a free lunch, wasn’t it? All he had to do was help within his own limits. It seemed painless enough, so he moved to open the door. What he never expected to see behind it was someone else in the room.

An invisible someone else, no less.

Ghosts had no trouble seeing into the invisible plane, and of course neither did Jazz. The shock of it almost made him slam the door shut and leave, but in his own confusion he bumped back into Jazz as she tried to dart inside the room. She rounded him anyway and faced the other spectre with courage that might have been as brave as it was stupid.

“You!” she spat, fury drowning her amiable face. The ecto-gun was already out. “You stole him, didn’t you? Where the hell is my little brother?!”

The Ghostwriter was braced halfway against the side of the door. He said nothing, but the ghost seemed more interested in him than the girl threatening her anyway, and flew within arm’s length — so close that he unintentionally recoiled back into the door handle.

“Funny to see you here,” she remarked. “Funny to see you dressed up like _that_. Did you manage to get the trust of dear little Jazz Fenton to get that wristband? Obviously she’s just as naïve as she was back when I broke both of her arms.”

“ _Stop talking to him_!” Jazz shrieked, thoroughly unimpressed with being ignored. She lunged forward with her gun and went to pull the trigger. “Give me back my—!”  
The gun disappeared without a trace, and Jazz was left standing in a position ready to shoot with clean and empty hands. She moved her fingers slightly, not quite believing it was gone.

“Of course I wouldn’t let you keep that after what I did to you.” said the ghost, who flicked a long black lock of hair out of her eyes. And then she brought that same hand back so quickly into Jazz’s face that the girl was sent careening across the room, spine slammed into one of the hospital cupboards. The ghost turned to Writer again, not a shred of care about the look of horror painted into his eyes. “See? She’s just as naïve as I used to be. But you, Jesus, you’re just pathetic — where’s the pride in pretending to be some kind of human? Trying to camouflage with the native wildlife? _What on Earth were you thinking?_ ”

“I was thinking that I wanted to help her because _she’s_ —!”

That was as far as he got. The Ghostwriter barely saw the flash of a second before the other ghost struck him, and before he knew it he was launched off his feet and slammed against the hospital wall.

“My my my, we are weak, aren’t we?” said the ghost, softly. From there she hovered over, dropping out of the invisible plain to address them both. “Tell you what. I’m going to give you an address. I’m going to write it on a piece of paper—” she paused to scribble on a post-it notepad with a pen she had apparently magicked out of thin air “—and now I’m going to give it to you. If you go there, you might even get poor little Danny Phantom back.”

The Ghostwriter looked up. His vision looked like a violent impressionist smear from the surprise and pain, but he strained to focus it and bring the ghost into proper sight. “… That’s obviously a trap,” he managed. She smiled pleasantly in return.

“Oh, honey. Of course it’s a trap.”

And then she disappeared into thin air, teleporting straight out of existence. A little yellowed glowing piece of paper fluttered down onto Jazz’s arm, the address branded on in loopy green handwriting. Sounds of panicked hospital workers rushing towards the source of the commotion filled the corridors, but the Ghostwriter heard only one thing.

“… Writer,” Jazz managed, eyes crossed over from the pain in her back. “Why does she know you?”


	3. Self-Healing and Other Lies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had a bit of a lapse there due to being quite busy over Christmas and New Years. This chapter got much longer than the original, and even had some content adjourned until the next chapter due to length and topic. The original chapter word count was 4,787, but ended up expanding to 6,574 here.
> 
> Thanks for reading, as always! :)

Not even a few seconds later a flood of medical professionals burst into the room. Doctors, nurses, all yammering and fumbling about as they tried to figure out what the hell just went down. But Jazz’s consciousness was waning, and her ability to pay attention to any of them was gone.

They were the last thing she remembered before waking up in a hospital bed with an IV stuck in her arm.

The room was light and airy, with the window cast wide open so that the fresh evening air could blow through. Its standard-issue lace curtains gave a gentle flutter with the wind, and she blinked at them, but caught sight of something else almost immediately: the Ghostwriter was invisible but nonetheless there, floating with his hands clasped tightly behind his back, stone-faced. His eyes were oddly glazed as he stared out the window. Thinking, perhaps?

She might have been able to see him through her contact lenses, but she was just too groggy to puzzle out herself what he might be entertaining. She wanted to know. … Wanted to talk to him.

“Hey,” said Jazz, in a quiet attempt to catch his attention. She raised her voice when that didn’t work and the response was elegant: a nearly perfectly silent jump out of his own skin, his eyes snapping to hers, glowing eerily like a deer in the headlights that was already dead. He then came to his senses and tried to look dignified about it.

“Sorry!” he managed, trying to hide the stutter. “I-I was… somewhere else. How are you feeling?”

Jazz took a moment to examine herself. She was fine until she shifted positions — a dull shiver of pain shot straight up her spine, clamping her teeth together by force. She braced herself to try and get a handle on it, and the Ghostwriter leaned over her bed in some apparent need to do something, but his lack of expertise didn’t leave him any options. Instead he seemed to hang uselessly midair, before finally giving up and backing away to let the episode pass.

“They gave you some sort of pain medicine, though I’m not sure if it’s still effective,” he muttered. “It might be wearing off.”

Oh. So that was the cause of the strange grogginess she felt. As the pain subsided into a steady throb she stared sickly up at the ceiling, jumbling through her memory to try and piece together what she was going to do.

“I got… hurt?” she said, carefully. “By that other ghost, didn’t I?”

The writer nodded. “She slammed you against a cupboard. Your spine hit the handle.”

“… Then what?”

The Ghostwriter sagged midair, frowning a bit, as if he were more sad than he was shocked and hurt. “She did the same to me, actually, and then decided to disappear into thin air,” he said, with a deep breath out. “… I suppose I’m fortunate not to be in the same position as you.”

Jazz stole a glance at him without moving her head. “Ghosts are more durable… right?”

“Not having a solid skeletal system helps.”

“What, so if you get thrown against a wall like that, you just sort of bend?”

… Not quite true, but close. “Distort, technically.”

Jazz seemed to wince, but he didn’t know if this was because of her pain or because of what he’d just said. “... So it doesn’t hurt?”

“It can, if you’re caught by surprise,” said the Ghostwriter, looking distasteful. “Although much less than actually breaking your spine I’d imagine.”

A brief flash of jealousy passed over her face, but she didn’t seem to be in a state to hide it.

“… So, what about after that? I think… there were nurses, right? And then I don’t remember anything.”

“You fell unconscious,” he explained, simply. “I’m not sure why. They tried to examine me too, but I slipped out of sight when no one was watching. You woke up a few times but I don’t think you were really _present_ , so they dosed you up on painkillers, took some x-rays, and brought you back here.”

“How long has it been?”

“About two hours.”

“And they didn’t call mum and dad?”

The Ghostwriter shrugged. “I’m not sure. Not that I heard.”

Jazz breathed out. “Hope not.”

There was a small pause as Jazz let her memories sink back into her brain. The events that had transpired after she’d walked into Danny’s room had turned into an enormous and gelatinous soup, shifting around and wobbling whenever she tried to think about them. But in that soup she could see that ghost clearly, watching as her weapon disappeared from her very fingertips.

“… She got away,” said Jazz, eventually. “I almost had an ectogun held to her head, and she still got away.”

“She also has one of the most infuriating powers of any ghost anywhere, so I wouldn’t beat yourself up too much,” the Ghostwriter reasoned. “Anyone with common sense stays well away from her.”

“Who is she?”

“Mirabella Spectra. Penelope Spectra’s sister.”

“Spectra?!” Jazz spat, but as another shiver of pain rattled up her spine she learned very quickly not to let her emotions get the better of her. “But,” she continued, once this had passed, “they don’t look anything alike!”

“They’re shapeshifters. Mirabella doesn’t use her original face anymore.”

The information raced through Jazz’s mind. She knew all about Spectra, but mostly on a kind of second-hand basis. After finally letting on that she knew of Danny’s secret, he’d told her about the many ghosts he’d fought, and Penelope Spectra had gone down as one of the most despised. After hearing the stories of what she’d done, Jazz couldn’t blame her little brother in the slightest; Spectra was quite possibly the most narcissistic ghost she’d ever heard of, and misery followed wherever her vanity went. To find out that that woman had a sister, and that that sister was responsible for stealing Danny…

“Her secondary power is… teleportation, as you’ve probably already guessed,” the Ghostwriter continued, after a moment. “If she’s within a few feet of an object that’s smaller than herself, she can teleport that, too.”

Jazz’s eyes slowly widened up. “So that’s how she got my gun! And — actually, she was talking to you, wasn’t she?” she added, with a slightly accusatory glare. “Why on earth was she talking to you like she used to _know_ you?”

His arms were tightly crossed. “Mira and I were friends once. As the fact that she threw me across the room should indicate, not anymore.”

“How could you possibly be friends with her?!”

“Once!” the Ghostwriter stressed, glowering at the very thought. “That’s not the same ghost I used to know. She went somewhere she wasn’t supposed to go one day and came back _changed_. Tried to attack both me and my brother before we even knew what was coming for us.”

“So what happened to her?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. If I didn’t know better I’d say she was possessed.”

He didn’t add that the very thought haunted him almost daily. That he had laid awake countless nights and quite a number of days, too, wondering what had happened to the enigma that was Mirabella Spectra. How did one of the most harmless and amiable ghosts in existence, whose sole purpose in life seemed to be to satiate her own never-ending curiosity, become the horror that was known today? Where had the pure strength necessary to slap someone across the room come from? This could only have been from the Abyss, and god only knows whatever was down there.

“… Were you good friends?” asked Jazz, eventually.

He stole a glance back down at this injured woman, but far from seeing someone weak and hurt he noted the burn of passion in her eyes, a determination that overthrew other forms of desire. At first the Ghostwriter didn’t know what to make of it — was it simply for her brother? Or was it…

She wasn’t analysing him, was she?

“… I suppose so,” he replied, vaguely. Jazz’s eyes still seemed almost hungry, but she took them away from him and decided to drop the subject there.

“Did you hear the doctors say anything about this injury?”

“… Spinal column. Bad swelling but no fractures.”

“Gee…”

“Can you feel your legs?”

Jazz’s eyes located the points of her toes underneath the blankets. They moved, if only slightly. “Yeah.”

“They said you should be assigned bed rest for at least several weeks, pending further testing,” the Ghostwriter elaborated. “To be honest, you’re lucky you’re not paralysed.”

She was silent. She didn’t want to acknowledge that.

“I checked on your brother a little earlier. Your ghost detectors don’t go off around him because he’s not a ghost.”

And then it became immediately clear that the previous silence had simply been regular silence. _This_ silence was far more physical, the type that might shatter like glass if you dared touch it. She turned her head slowly, looking up at the other ghost as if he’d just told one of the biggest lies she’d ever heard.

But she knew it was true.

“… He’s not a ghost right now,” said Jazz, carefully.

“But if he was awake he wouldn’t be able to transform into one, either,” the Ghostwriter added. “I can’t feel that type of presence from him. There’s just nothing.”

“The ecto-signature?”

“The what?”

“You said presence? Like — it’s that ectoplasmic aura that radiates out of ghosts, the same one our detectors pick up!”

“… Then yes, that,” said the Ghostwriter. “I’ve met him before, and I’ve seen writings on his situation. First-hand accounts all note that he has an auric presence, ecto-signature, whatever you’d like to call it, even when apparently human. When I was next to him, it simply felt like standing next to you. There’s a bit of presence and nothing much else.”

Jazz’s eyes slowly fell to the pristine white bedsheets that covered most of her body. “… So I was right, then. When Spectra attacked him, she took his ghost as well.”

The writer didn’t really want to say anything, and wouldn’t meet her eyes when he did. “… That’s what I’d suspect. But to where and for what purpose, God only knows.”

Out of sadness and spite, Jazz tried to recall more of the earlier incident clearly in her mind — it came through in thin slices, like tiny cross sections on an impossibly more infinite plane of existence. Yellow flashed through her head, followed by the illusory feeling of pain. Redness, everywhere? It hurt just thinking about it. And then there was that note, that yellow note, which had fluttered down and landed on her—

The note!

“Where’s the address she left behind?!” Jazz blurted out. “We have to go and — _shit!_ ”

The girl collapsed back into her bed in pain and the Ghostwriter winced, knowing he couldn’t do anything to resolve it. Another wave of sharp tremors zig-zagged up her spine. As much as she hated to admit it, it was this that made her truly understand just how presently helpless she was to do anything about saving her brother.

Yet… Danny had been injured like this more times than she could count. Sure, he had an inhuman ability to heal himself and the sort of willpower rarely seen outside the military, but it was more the fact that he always just seemed to be able to keep going, keep saving people. And here she was, crippled in a hospital bed, unable to summon the strength for him that he so surely would have displayed for her.

… _Why?_ Why did she have to be so useless?

“You’re obviously in no condition to be thinking about that note,” said the Ghostwriter, not unkindly. “Breathe.”

She ignored the command in its entirety. “I don’t care what condition I’m in! He’s my brother and the only thing I’m missing is the willpower to get out of this hospital bed!” Jazz rallied. “He would’ve saved me!”

“And he could have suffered paraplegia for the rest of his life for doing so.”

“… What?”

“You only get one spine. Break that and you won’t be saving anyone.”

“A bit of swelling isn’t going to—”

The Ghostwriter crossed his arms. “What do you think happens if the swelling gets worse and puts pressure on or even cuts the strings of nerves and neurons that run up and down your back?” he asked. “That’s not from my mouth. I’m just repeating the doctors.”

… The worst part of all of this was that deeply, she knew that.

Psychology wasn’t just the study of things that go on in the brain, much as people might like to think. In some ways it was also the study of the human nervous system, including the highway of nerves and neurons attached to the spinal cord. Any Unauthorised Poking or Prodding or Getting Smashed Into Cupboards was liable to create permanent damage, and provoking these things after becoming injured really wasn’t the smartest of ideas.

“… But that note,” said Jazz, longingly, uselessly.

“I promise you that it is six hundred percent a trap—”

The Ghostwriter cut himself short mid-sentence upon hearing someone on the other side of the door. Not a second later a nurse bustled in, dressed in frumpy-looking scrubs and wearing that haughty type of expression one was never quite overjoyed to see on a medical professional. “What’s all this racket?” she demanded, looking around for a conversation partner that didn’t exist. He floated there patiently as he observed her from his corner, cosily between the cupboard and Jazz’s bed.

Jazz didn’t supply an answer. The nurse wasn’t satisfied with that, and she went straight up to Jazz’s bedside to question her better, where the Ghostwriter was sinking into the corner even further until he’d managed to squash himself up against the wall. Jazz tried not to watch him fold himself up like that, and indeed in different circumstances she might even have found the situation quite funny. He was quickly hidden from view, however, by Janette the Nurse, whose name badge was now so far into Jazz’s personal space that she wondered if the words might be burned into her brain for the rest of her life.

“I don’t know who or what you were arguing with, but you should know it isn’t visiting hours at the moment,” Janette chided. “So if anyone were to be _hiding_ in here, he should know it’s about high time he went home instead of provoking the patient.”

Jazz looked away. “… What are you talking about?”

“I—” the nurse began, suddenly unsure of herself. “—Fine, if you’re so sure you’re actually alone and recovering in here, so be it. … Lord, it’s cold.”

It was perhaps the most innocent expression Jazz had ever managed. “Is it?” she asked, looking genuinely puzzled. The Ghostwriter however had lived a life rarely graced with such subtlety, and was beginning to contemplate the very same action-oriented approach Maddie had impressed upon him not more than a few hours ago. He curiously examined his invisible hand as the nurse fussed over Jazz’s blankets and then, with a wicked grin, forced it into intangibility and raked his fingers through the nurse’s neck. The scream could have broken windows.

… In hindsight, it’d been lucky that the nurse only fell on Jazz’s bed and not onto Jazz herself. Not another word was said — escape was apparently the only option. Janette the Nurse left the room faster than a clown misdirected to a funeral and never returned.

“Problem solved,” proclaimed the Ghostwriter with an evil smirk, but upon catching Jazz’s glare, his face fell. “… Must you give me that look? I’m a ghost. Scaring people half to death is what we do. It’s the Natural Order of Things.”

“It wasn’t necessary.”

His frown almost turned into a sulk, but his dignity didn’t let it get that far. “I thought you might have laughed.”

“I’m not in the mood,” she muttered, tentatively turning her neck away so as not to aggravate her injury. “As soon as I’m better I have to find Danny. She must have his ghost half or something stashed away somewhere, maybe if I can get it back he can wake up.”

The Ghostwriter felt oddly as if he was becoming somewhat of a parent. He peeled himself out of that cramped little corner and crossed his arms again, staring tensely at a girl who seemed fully aware she was wishing to put herself in harm’s way. “You, and by extension myself, cannot simply go gallivanting into whatever god-forsaken house is at that address. I’ve seen Mira’s traps and they’re probably one of the fastest ways to get yourself killed.”

“But that makes it even worse!” she argued. “What on earth do you think she’s doing to my little brother?!”

He didn’t know how to respond to that.

For Jazz, the world itself had descended into chaos in the space of one afternoon. Just as an uneasy routine of guarding the portal had begun to set in, the ghost from her nightmares two years ago had appeared again. And to tease her, no less! Had Mirabella Spectra never come back, Jazz wouldn’t have had a lead to follow, and thus probably would have been content to lay in that hospital bed for as long as it took for her body to mend. But now that she had a lead, she could only feel that time was a luxury she couldn’t afford.

In her frustration, a few tears escaped. She wiped them away quickly in some vague attempt to remain stoic.

Meanwhile, the Ghostwriter was still as clueless about how to fix this as he was one minute ago. A few things unfortunately stem from being socially stunted, and not being able to react properly to the pain and grief of others was one of them. He felt awful seeing her like this, but he didn’t know what to say and the only thing he could think of doing was completely out of the question.

… Or was it?

It was littered with pros and cons. In fact, part of him knew just how spectacularly a bad idea this could be: for one, he had no medical experience whatsoever and had no idea how much pain this might cause her. But on the other hand, she’d be fixed up almost in an instant and he could probably check up with Technus about his keyboard, too. Apart from some strange and somewhat dangerous kinks, that keyboard was very close to working when he’d left. … It might be a game changer.

Oh, but she wasn’t going to like this. Not at all.

“… Jasmine,” hazarded the Ghostwriter, catching her attention. “What if I said there was a way to mend your back faster. Much faster.”

Wide teal eyes. There was definitely interest.

“… There exists a ghost known as the Witch Doctor. He lives in my area of the Ghost Zone and can heal most illnesses and injuries in seconds — even advanced problems suffered by ghosts.”

“Bring him here,” Jazz commanded. “Give him the wristband, tell him to—”

“It’s not that easy, girl,” the Ghostwriter cut in, seriously. “He absolutely refuses to come out of his den, and by extension the Ghost Zone. I know of his existence only through literature and word of mouth and the fact that his place of operations is rather obvious. If you want him to mend you, I’m going to have to take you there myself.”

Jazz’s face dropped. “Like, inside the Ghost Zone?”

“Yes.”

“Are you serious?”

“The Ghost Zone isn’t as bad as you think, you know.”

As if that was going to work — she was almost sweating at the thought. “Only if you’re one of the native inhabitants!” she rallied back. “And I turned all of those ghosts away! They’ll recognise me! Some of them probably even want me dead.”

… She _did_ have a point. Ghosts were well-known for being quite a bit less forgiving than they ought to be, and given that a majority of them continued existing for a decent slice of eternity, grudges could last for centuries.

… But on the other hand, it wasn’t like they were going to be inside the Ghost Zone for very long — the Witch Doctor’s den was less than a minute’s flight from the portal, and on top of that, most of the local inhabitants knew that pissing off a ghost that could bend reality generally wasn’t the best of ideas.

“Look…” he began, treading carefully. “I know that place. Being honest, I’m far more concerned about how your back might fare on the way. I can fly as smoothly as possible, but inevitably my carrying you is not ideal. But if you go along with this we can be in and out of the Ghost Zone in under ten minutes, and you’ll be better.”

Jazz was still pale, and now she wasn’t even talking.

He was about to open his mouth again when more noises started to brew outside the door.  At first he wasn’t concerned, but those noises soon turned into the voice of Janette the Nurse screaming.

“I don’t care if you can’t detect it, there’s a ghost in there — I felt it! Call the fucking Fentons already and get it hunted down!”

The Ghostwriter looked as though he’d just bitten into a lemon. “That was my fault, wasn’t it?”

“One hundred percent,” said Jazz, icily.

“… Sorry.”

“No, it’s fine, let’s just go and see this Witch Doctor ghost then,” Jazz stammered, running one hand through the hair behind her headband. She was getting more concerned about her parents finding her in hospital, and it showed — there was some obvious distress lodged in there, and the prospect of being bedridden for weeks wasn’t exactly tantalising.

The Ghostwriter nodded, and went for it.

The ordeal wasn’t clean. Jazz was cringing and gritting her teeth together as he picked her up, and he realised quickly that gaining his power over reality had very much been at the sacrifice of physical strength. It boiled down to this: Humans Are Heavy, and it was the first time in his entire afterlife that the Ghostwriter had ever had to think about or deal with it. He’d carried Mira once or twice (actually, both times it had ended with Mira carrying him, but he preferred to ignore that part), and there’d been little to no trouble involved because ectoplasm was massless. Although thin, Jazz had weight, _real actual weight_ , and it was a struggle to pull them both into the air and make it seem effortless. If she wasn’t distracted by pain he wouldn’t have gotten away with it.

All in all though, it wasn’t too bad.

The first part was a struggle. He forced invisibility through the both of them, and for the first thirty seconds he felt as if carrying a sack full of large stone bricks, which wasn’t what he wanted to liken a human to but the comparison was drawn nonetheless. But he seemed to get a feel for it after some time — if he adjusted his energy output, he could better manage the burdon. It gave him room to think, room to stare at the now-strange but nostalgic outside world.

The moon was out. Full, he noted. Perhaps if he’d been on his own tonight while the wind was low and the sky was clear, that would have been a true blessing — but as he caught sight of Jazz trying her best to stay as still as possible, and after knowing that Mira had been a part of all of this… he couldn’t ignore that. At the very least some part of him felt as if he had an odd duty to keep the Fenton daughter safe, if from nothing else but her own reckless drive to save her brother at any cost.

Even after being healed, he vowed not to let her walk blindly into Mira’s trap. There had to be another way. A _safer_ way. Like waiting for his keyboard repairs to be finished.

“I always hated it when Danny turned me invisible or phased me through something,” said Jazz eventually, snapping him out of his thoughts. Her voice was quiet as if she was afraid of being heard, even out here. “It’s like this cold that you can feel all the way through your bones.”

“… You’re not shivering, though?” he noted.

“Trying not to.”

The air whipped past. If he were to guess, that probably wasn’t particularly warm either. “I’d cut the invisibility, but we’re completely out in the open,” he noted. “We’re not too far away though — your house’s roof really is something else.”

“… The Emergency Ops Centre.”

“Is that what it’s called? It looks like a UFO.”

Jazz made a smile that might have been a wince. “You’re not the first person to say that.” He smiled back, encouragingly.

_So I’m a person now, am I? That’s nice to know._

It didn’t take long, however, for the topic to come back to more primal issues. “Writer,” she began, “Do you realise how cold you are? Because you’re really cold. Can you even feel temperature?”

The Ghostwriter looked down at her and thought about it. It was something he hadn’t given much thought in years, mainly because the temperature in the Ghost Zone was so consistent that one could be tricked into thinking it had ceased to exist. On the other hand, he had to admit that genuine fluctuations in temperature just didn’t seem to register like they used to. He could have put his hand into a saucepan full of boiling water and not felt the slightest bit of discomfort.

“Well, in a way,” he managed thoughtfully, as he steered a steady descent towards the Fenton family home. “… It’s difficult to notice. But the Ghost Zone’s very cold — will you be fine?”

“How cold?”

“34 degrees Fahrenheit constant, according to measurements.”

“Are you joking — that’s barely above freezing! I’m going to need something warmer than this.”

She was right. Barely above freezing _was_ a bit too cold for your average human. As they descended, he noted a very suspicious Fenton-labelled RV leaving the driveway. _The Fenton parents were leaving._ They must have been rushing to the hospital. _Thank God._

And that empty house, it was a blessing. With Maddie and Jack Fenton absent, the Ghostwriter was free to set himself down inside Jazz’s bedroom without fear of being jumped — even with the uncomfortable bracelet that thwarted his glow, it was an awkward situation he’d rather not be found in. He laid her down carefully on her own bed and then made a start towards her closet.

“A jacket, right?”

“Maybe a hat and some gloves, too,” she admitted. “They’re on the top shelf.”

He opened the closet door. Perhaps, under any normal circumstances, it would have been the strangely uniform collection of black long-sleeve tops and blue jeans that would have thrown him, but there was something much more concerning when he took notice of the floor. A frightening variety of medium-to-large ecto weapons were stashed away in there, as if the closet itself was a personal weapons vault without much security.

“… Y-yeah…” said Jazz, awkwardly, as she watched.

“It’s… fine,” he replied, voice quiet.

Nothing happened for about thirty seconds until Jazz moved ever so slightly, raising an arm to point into the mess of metal and death. “Maybe you should take one,” she suggested. “You know… just in case.”

… It was true that without his keyboard he was seriously unequipped to be challenged by anything. If someone wanted a fight he had little means to defend himself, and so he grimaced and thought about it and objected to the idea of carrying any kind of gun, but in the end, he reached hesitantly into the pile of weapons and carefully fished out the most standard-looking ectogun he could find.

“… Does this do what I think it does?”

“More or less.”

“Fine,” he said, and after that he fished out a holster and attached it to his belt. “It’s only for an emergency, though.”

Fumbling through the rest of her wardrobe revealed a thick black jacket designed to reach down to the thighs and a pair of knitted mittens, which had both fallen to the side of the weapon stash. A black winter hat with a white pom pom was on the top shelf as promised, though threatening to fall off at any moment. He took them all and hung them over the end of her bed.

It was at this point that he realised the difficult part of this situation.

“… So, how much _can_ you move without pain, exactly?”

The Look he received back struck it clearly into him that she most certainly could not move without pain.

“Do you think you could endure it long enough for me to get this coat over you, then?”

Jazz eyed it as if it were some type of medieval torture device. “Good luck.”

_Unless…_

The Ghostwriter held the jacket up in front of himself for a moment, tilted his head, and thought. And then he turned it intangible, phased Jazz’s arms into the sleeves, and managed to get it around her with what could rightfully be chalked up as witchcraft. She barely had to move an inch.

“… That was actually impressive,” said Jazz, after a moment. “Danny never thought of solutions like that.”

The writer shrugged. “I’d rather think my way around a problem than fight my way through it.”

“It was never his strong suit,” she agreed, quickly. “Oh, can you put the mittens on? I can’t reach.”

“Right,” said the Ghostwriter, who had almost forgotten about them. He grabbed them off the side of the bed along with the hat, and fitted them onto her carefully.

“That should be an improvement. Do you feel any better?”

“Much, thanks.”

 _… But not for long, because I’m about to phase you into your basement_ , thought the Ghostwriter, a little guiltily.

He picked her up again, gently. This didn’t seem to matter — Jazz still let out a small grunt of pain, but she stifled it quickly and pretended not to have made a sound. He didn’t like that sort of situation but realised they were going to have to move past it regardless, and so he made his descent slowly through the floor and into the lab.

She shivered on the way down.

The swirling green mass of the ghost portal was right in front of them now, and suddenly Jazz seemed more reluctant than ever.

“… What if the other ghosts just attack?” she asked. “Because you’ve got me?”

The Ghostwriter managed a very small shrug — difficult under her weight. “I don’t think they will. Most couldn’t care less about you or that portal, I think.” He paused for another moment to think. “… To be honest, most stay away from me.”

“What? Why?”

“My keyboard,” he reasoned. “Most of them don’t know it’s broken.”

“They’re scared of you because of your power?”

A moment. _No_ , he thought. _They’re scared of me because I’m vindictive._

But he didn’t say that.

The lab was cold and dank. For a moment the Ghostwriter took some time to reabsorb his surroundings, remember what was in here, and it was then that he realised with a feeling akin to shrivelling horror that they’d left his book on a table and now it was _gone._ An overwhelming urge to drop the girl and search for the object overtook him completely, but something within him berated these thoughts and dragged his mind kicking and screaming back on task. They were going to the Ghost Zone. They weren’t going to be there for long, and he could deal with this later.

Not that he’d ever be able to stop thinking about it, though.

“Okay,” he managed, forcing himself to stare into the portal. “Better to get this over with.”

He flew through.

The cold atmosphere washed over Jazz as the sea of swirling green flooded into her eyes, but the gloves and jacket did her well, and it wasn’t nearly as bad as she’d been expecting. Floating purple objects could be seen dotted in the distance for miles around, but the Ghostwriter didn’t slow down once he got inside and she didn’t get a good chance to look. For this, she was glad: the whole place was dark and bright and eerie all at the same time, and whenever she noticed one of the dimension’s native inhabitants floating close by, she did her very best not to make eye contact. Sometimes they looked at her. Were they some of the many she’d turned back?

“Almost there,” said the writer, quietly.

They changed course around one of the smorgasbords of floating rocks, and then came towards a relatively isolated little island. It seemed to have a burrow in it — a strangely decorated one at that — and it reminded Jazz somewhat of a hobbit hole. It wasn’t nasty or rundown, simply comfortable-looking, almost even a little welcoming.

… Well, welcoming wasn’t hard when you compared it to the rest of the Ghost Zone. That wasn’t even mentioning the dull ache in her back, which hadn’t gotten better during the course of the flight.

The Ghostwriter landed carefully on the island before making a start towards the door. A voice filtered through before he could even knock: “Come in,” it said, although whoever owned it sounded distracted.

Even in spite of the antique wooden walls it was notably dank inside, excluding the blinding white light that shone over the physician’s chair. Somehow this didn’t give away the vibe of an unfolding horror story with the small exception of the Witch Doctor himself: he donned a beak mask straight out of the Renaissance and craned over the patient as he hovered his hand just above their stomach. A strange green whirl of energy filtered downwards, healing before their eyes a large tear that seemed to have almost cut the patient in half.

Jazz recognised with some trepidation that the patient was Ember. The wound had disappeared without a trace.

“It’s not my business to tell you what to do with yourself Ms. McLain,” the Witch Doctor began, a little… was that annoyed? “But I suggest you keep yourself a way from this Skulker fellow. It wouldn’t do to see a pretty young thing like you here again like that, now would it?”

Ember said nothing and climbed out of the chair indignantly. It was there she caught Jazz’s eye, forcing a double-take. “ _You_?” she stammered. “What’s the dipstick’s sister doing here? This is the Ghost Zone! Get out of our—”

“ _All are welcome in this practice, Ms. McLain,_ ” warned the Witch Doctor, with a voice that suggested he could just as easily undo the injury he’d just mended. “Unless you want me to turn you away the next time your terrible excuse for a partner decides to take his anger out on you, I suggest you cut the racism and have a good long think about our little chat this evening.”

She harrumphed, swiped up her guitar from where it was resting against the wall, and then tried to stomp her way out in the most dignified way possible. The Ghostwriter stared at her all the way. The Witch Doctor watched her warily, as well.

“Now…” he said, and after a quick look over Jazz, he already seemed to understand. “I assume this young lady needs treatment? Her back is in quite poor shape.”

The pair nodded, though Jazz’s was weak. “She was thrown into a cupboard by Mirabella Spectra,” the Ghostwriter supplied. A flash of understanding could be seen even through the Witch Doctor’s mask.

“I see. Lay her face-down on this chair here. Just let me alter the shape of it a bit…” he trailed off, pushing a few levers and flattening out the surface space. “There, that should do. Now, gently does it…”

The doctor put a hand over the damaged area of her spine as they moved her, and in an instant the pain was suddenly gone. She could move, adjust herself, and lie down properly without the slightest complaint, and it was at that point Jazz realised just how bad her back had been. She smiled giddily in relief.

It was a shame it all flooded back as soon as he let go of her. She gasped and gritted her teeth again.

“I’ll be frank,” said the Witch Doctor, frowning under his mask. “Humans are much more troublesome to heal than ghosts, thanks to sub-optimal biology and an extended natural healing cycle. You will require rest for at least sixteen hours, and during that time you should remain as still as possible _regardless of how well you feel_. There might be some weakness when you start to move again, but strength should return properly after a few hours. Is that perfectly clear?”

This was not the instant healing she’d been promised, and she wanted to argue. But it was there she caught sight of the Ghostwriter’s expression and, finally, decided this was at least better than what the doctors in Amity were offering her. “I — yes, okay,” she conceded.

“Good,” said the Witch Doctor. “Because — and do trust me when I say it — you do _not_ want to be coming back here with a broken spine.”

“—Yeah…” This time she sounded crestfallen.

“Now, about compensation…” the doctor went on. “I don’t accept traditional forms of payment — I will only accept an IOU. One of you will be required to do for me one favour in return for the treatment, at a time that suits me. Do you accept?”

The Ghostwriter had heard about this. Usually, the Witch Doctor’s IOUs turned out to harmless errands, like picking up a scalpel from [xyz] location or passing information to others. They were not immune, however, from developing into decidedly more complex tasks, like _Please pacify this patient **I do not have any sedatives!**_. The Witch Doctor refused to leave his practice and thus this had become a standard part of his job. When it was time to pay the debt, his assistant would find you and you would be supplied with the task at hand.

It didn’t matter if you tried to hide. You could always, somehow, seem to be found. Or so they said.

Regardless, it wasn’t the worst arrangement, and so the Ghostwriter nodded slowly. “I’ll take the debt.”

“Good, good,” said the Witch Doctor, all business. “We’ll get started then. Now girl, you shouldn’t feel any pain — if you do, I suggest you speak up. Is that clear?”

“It’s clear,” said Jazz, and he got to work.

… And it was over in less than five minutes.

Jazz realised very quickly that she wasn’t just not feeling pain — she wasn’t feeling anything at all. By the time he was done she was even a little shocked at how _simple_ it all seemed to be. Pain did return somewhat, but it was so minimal that it could almost be ignored. _Almost._

“There, that should accelerate your natural healing cycle immensely,” he declared, with a smile under that dreadful mask. “Now please do go and rest. You’ll need it.”

They thanked him. Carefully, the Ghostwriter picked Jazz up again, turned around, and started to fly back to the human world. Checking up on his keyboard could wait a little while longer.

And for this, Jazz was infinitely grateful.


End file.
